Born in 1913 in Tuskegee, Alabama, Rosa Parks was an African-American seamstress. With her husband, she campaigned for Black voter registration and, after experiencing her first racist incident on a bus, she joined the local chapter of the NAACP, the civil rights organization. Elected secretary, she recorded racist incidents and took action, notably in the 1944 gang rape of Recy Taylor. Eleven years later, on December 1, 1955, her arrest following her refusal to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery bus triggered a 381-day boycott of the city's public transportation. Having spearheaded Martin Luther King's first successful mass action, Rosa Parks continued her commitment in Detroit, where she died on October 24, 2005.
